Berlin needs to build a new wall. A firewall around the burning building that
is the Greek financial system.

But everywhere Germans are apoplectic about the scale and cost of such a firewall as proposed over the weekend at the International Monetary Fund's Washington meeting and backed by the likes of the US.

German wrath will be vented on Thursday in the Bundestag but the country should remember its responsibility and duty to the single currency, having been the biggest beneficiary from its creation.

German voters, many of whom didn't want the single currency in the first place, have to accept that if anything is too big to fail, it is the euro. It's the same here, too. It may not be our currency but, boy, is it our problem.

However, Germany, as the eurozone's biggest economy, has a unique duty to do everything in its power to save the single currency and avoid an economic catastrophe that would devastate its own economy, those of its continental neighbours with whom it trades and drag ours into the mess at the same time.

The country had to pay a high price for unification. But since the advent of the single currency it has enjoyed a new leg of its post-war economic miracle.

European capital markets became deeper, more liquid and efficient, driving down the cost of capital for German companies.

Trade was boosted across the eurozone, to everyone's advantage, but particularly Germany's. The country certainly made the most of the situation, for which it cannot be blamed, but it has to accept its role in fixing the system that handed it so many advantages.

It received a huge economic boost over the years through low inflation and high productivity as the single currency delivered an enormous competitive advantage compared with where the country would have been with the deutschemark.

Just think what would have happened in recent years to the drachma, lira, escudo and punt relative to the deutschemark as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland fell into financial distress because of recession. It's true that the current crisis wouldn't exist in its present form if the euro hadn't been invented. But not having the euro wouldn't have avoided the credit boom and bust, so Europe would still have suffered a credit crunch and banking crisis.

You only have to look at the Swiss franc to see how overvalued, and uncompetitive, the German currency would have become.

The Greek deficit and German surplus are not separate issues. They are simply two faces of the same problem, two forces creating the one state of imbalance. If Berlin believes Athens should deal with its deficit through austerity, then it must compensate to rebalance the system through stimulating European-wide growth through spending or subsidy.

Stabilising the euro is also crucial for Germany because, despite the widespread state of denial there, this is a German banking crisis. It was Germany's banks that provided much of the credit to countries such as Greece in the first place, along with French banks.

Angela Merkel knows the crisis is lapping at the Bundestag's doors and breaking away from the euro would deliver a horror show without end.

No help from Germany can, or should, be unconditional. Greece and the rest must do their duty, too. But if there is to be an end to what's now unfolding it will take Germany to head the process, lead a recapitalisation of the system's banks, accept bigger losses on Greek debts and allow liquidity to flood the markets to stop its still solvent neighbours being dragged to an even worse fate.

Bank of England cannot afford to lose powers to Europe

The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee (FPC) is still limbering up but its initial recommendations are pragmatic and sensible. This includes the idea that banks should lower bonuses to rebuild capital when profits fall but that regulators shouldn't exacerbate market fragility through demands to raise capital that are too onerous and simply make matters worse.

But all this pragmatism and discretion will come to nought if the UK loses regulatory sovereignty to Brussels, a threat the FPC noted at the end of its statement on Wednesday. What worries the Bank is the notion of harmonisation, where rule books are standardised to one level across Europe. We would be locked in to one, inflexible European system. Sound familiar? I thought so.

A degree of common sense broke out at mining group ENRC on Wednesday night. The priority of the new board must now be to rebuild relations with its minority shareholders and the wider City community. Its corporate governance review has bought it some time but the newly constituted board still has to prove that the right men are in the right jobs.